ANGELO FOOTBALL CLINIC: Offensive master shares wisdom

Holgorsen awaits 1st year as W.Va. coach

Holgorsen's offenses have been some of the highest ranked the past 11 years.

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Dana Holgorsen accepted his invitation to speak at the 38th annual Angelo Football Clinic as the offensive coordinator at West Virginia University.

By the time he arrived in San Angelo, however, he had become the Mountaineers' head coach.

On June 10, five days before he was set to talk about his drop-back passing game in San Angelo, Holgorsen succeeded Bill Stewart, who resigned under pressure. Holgorsen had already been named the coach-in-waiting and was expected to take over in 2012.

It put Holgorsen's name in national sports news, but that's not why a couple hundred coaches stayed late to watch his session Wednesday at Angelo State University's Junell Center.

The coaches were there to learn from a coach whose offenses have been tearing up college football the past 11 years.

Holgorsen was a member of the Texas Tech coaching staff from 2000-07, when the Red Raiders were often among the nation's leaders in passing. In 2008-09 at the University of Houston, he helped the Cougars finish in the top 10 in the country in passing both years.

Then, last year at Oklahoma State, he took an offense that ranked No. 61 in total offense the year before and helped it become No. 1 in the nation with 537.6 yards per game.

Considering his résumé, it's not surprising it was the fifth time Holgorsen was invited to speak at the clinic.

"I probably do six to 12 of these a year, at least," Holgorsen said. "So I'm doing them a bunch. And this is one that you can get to and see a lot of the guys that you know because it's such a prominent clinic that you're getting a lot of the guys back."

Holgorsen said coaching clinics were important to him when he was an up-and-coming coach. In fact, he said he still tries to keep learning each year.

"By the time you think you know too much, you're going to get humbled pretty quick," Holgorsen said. "So you better keep learning. It doesn't matter what age you are."

Holgorsen, who has been an assistant coach for 18 years, said he's excited to be heading into his first season as a head coach.

"I thought it might be another six months from now, but we sped the game up, and here we are," he said. "I'm pretty fired up about it. I've worked for some pretty good guys, Mike Leach (at Texas Tech) and Kevin Sumlin (at Houston). Those guys do a pretty good job. They won a lot of games, so I feel pretty good about it."

Holgorsen was hired as West Virginia's offensive coordinator in December of last year.

Athletic director Oliver Luck (the father of Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck) announced that Holgorsen would replace Stewart as head coach in 2012.

Not surprisingly, it was an awkward situation, and the coaches' relationship appeared strained from the start. It finally boiled over when Colin Dunlap, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said Stewart had asked him and another reporter from the Charleston Gazette to dig up negative information about Holgorsen.

The claims were never substantiated, but Luck soon forced Stewart's resignation on June 10.

A few days later, Holgorsen celebrated his promotion by sky diving.

Holgorsen, who played college football in his home state at Iowa Wesleyan, will be working outside this region of the country for the first time since he was an assistant coach at Wingate in 1999.

"It's a little different than what I'm used to from a geography standpoint," he said. "You've got guys from all over the Midwest, the Northeast, the East and the South. So you're getting a good collection of guys together that have to learn a lot about each other. But they seem like they like to play, and they seem pretty fired up."